As human beings, our view of the world is full of examples of self limiting beliefs. Perhaps the easiest way to recognize these beliefs is to pay attention to our language.

Most of us have been taught the methods and practices of rational analysis and problem-solving. We’ve been practicing those techniques all our lives. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be a strong correlation between the expertise that one so derives and one’s quality of life.

While we have among us a number of people who play the role of Bull frog, they are actually just pretenders. The real Bull is the belief system that each of us has bought into. It has convinced us that we must stay within our beliefs and defend them with everything we have. The real Bull has its own agenda, which is to stay in control.

Dissatisfaction is a topic that arises frequently when people engage in “real talk,” when they are in a safe space to tell the truth about their lives. It’s easily understandable among those of us who feel as if we have wasted time following unproductive paths. It’s less obvious, however, for those of us who did all the “right” things and still feel dissatisfied with life.

What Ronald Reagan called the “shining city on a hill,” the America of our ideals, was an invention, a romantic notion that made us all feel good. That illusion has been shattered for me. But it turns out that disillusionment is a good thing.

I questioned that statement in the context of inquiring into the meaning of quantum physics. Most of my readers seem to accept that quantum theory correctly predicts how the physical world behaves. In fact, if it didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have transistors, cellphones, and computers. However, quantum theory also presents a powerful enigma: it speaks to the likely results of any observation of the world, and not to the world itself.

In general terms, the observer effect is the established fact that observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes it. This idea shows up in a range of contexts, from psychology to computer science and electronics to quantum physics. But it’s even more interesting in the context of what a human being really is.

The human mind seems to contain a number of perceptual biases. Perhaps the primary such bias is the one about what is real. This question about what is real can be considered in the context of time, specifically the past, present and future.

In a previous post, I suggested that one of the most fundamental misunderstandings we humans labor under is that an ego is a part of ourselves. In psychoanalysis, the ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.

The ocean in which each of us is submerged is our individual belief system. And our belief systems, though they differ in some respect from one another, are all based on some common fundamental misunderstandings that we’ve all inherited from the culture into which we were born. That commonality is what forms the ocean of Ego.

When I think about the history of this and the previous century, I find it hard to identify any occasion on which punishment and consequences have actually rid the world of the bad behavior they were designed to counter. Why is that?

Poring over records of the past won’t provide solutions to the problems our rational approach to life creates.  That requires “thinking outside the library” of the content of our minds.

Seeing the world at large as indifferent to our presence in it leaves us feeling powerless. Seeing the world as a projection of our ideas puts us in the driver’s seat.

Back in September, 2021, I posted a meme I created about quantum physics as a story. That post has generated a huge number of comments, some acknowledgement, and much criticism. Here’s a brief, illustrative conversation.

Back in September, I posted some thoughts on the idea of control. My thought was that while we think we have at least some measure of control over the conditions and circumstances we face in life, we have more effective control over what thoughts we choose to think, and that gives us a powerful say in how we feel. The following conversation ensued.

The only thing I would add to what you said is that the nothing out of which something comes is actually everything.

How can we think outside the ‘box’? This is something I have wrestled with for decades, and I share my insights in Hoodwinked. As a scientist, modern physics offered me powerful examples of how getting unstuck from unexamined assumptions can open up an entire field of new possibilities.

I’ve been carrying on the most wonderful conversation with a reader, whom I’ll call Steve. I think it really helps to clarify some of what I presented in Hoodwinked; I hope it will be useful to you as well.

From a typical person’s point of view, the correlation between one’s emotions and experience may seem obvious.  Most people believe that their emotional temperature (essentially the way they feel about things in general) is a product of the events and conditions they encounter.  However, my argument is that in reality it works the other way around.

Now, when I hear the phrase “As within, so without,” I remember that “without” is simply an idea, part of the description I have adopted to explain what I see, hear, and so on. I understand that there is only “within,” because my perceptions, and their description, lie entirely within myself… and that is all there is. There is no need of a mechanism that connects within and without, because they both have their being inside me, and you, and all of us. That’s why the world is a mirror.